Monday, April 23, 2007

Shooter was a concern for his family almost from birth, grandparents and others in Korea hoped moving to a more open society would stop him from being sullen, silent and withdrawn. Not helped by the fact his ister was openly brilliant.

Bright daughter, brooding son: enigma in the Cho household Silent and withdrawn boy was eclipsed by his sister in a culture emphasizing male success. But no one expected what was to come. By Bob Drogin, Faye Fiore and K. Connie Kang Times Staff Writers

April 22, 2007

CENTREVILLE, VA. - The three-story beige town house on Truitt Farm Drive stands as the Cho family's symbol of middle-class success, precisely what they were searching for when they left a dank basement apartment and a life of struggle in South Korea 15 years ago.

But the dream house is empty now, abandoned by a family on the run, not from the law but from a world seeking some sort of explanation.

Like millions of other immigrant families, Sung-tae Cho and his wife, Hyang-im, struggled to speak English, worked grueling hours and made countless sacrifices to lift their young family upward.

Out of that tough and potentially scarring experience came two very different children: a scholarly, idealistic daughter who graduated from an Ivy League university and a friendless, brooding son who retreated into a dark world of his own and committed the worst mass shooting in modern American history.

Seung-hui Cho's rampage at Virginia Tech Monday killed 32 teachers and students and wounded more than two dozen others. It also left the Korean American community and the rest of the world to wonder what went so horribly wrong. Family members have offered few answers, speaking only to the FBI for the first few days and then saying in a emotional statement Friday that they felt "hopeless, helpless and lost."

No one can know what went through Cho's mind as he prepared and carried out his grisly acts. But there are clues.

Cho, 23, grew up on a quiet cul-de-sac where neighbors waved a friendly hello, but would later say they hardly knew he existed. He attended a mostly white high school that installed round tables in the lunchroom to encourage students to interact, but Cho barely spoke a word. And he was raised in a South Korean family and culture that so values boys his mother once told her employer that she wished her son had attended Princeton instead of her daughter.

Asian immigrants tend to emphasize education and success, and by all accounts, the Chos were no exception. From a South Korean immigrant's perspective, said Edward T. Chang, professor of ethnic studies at UC Riverside and an immigrant himself, you are either a success or a failure.

"There is no middle ground."

Poor, rural roots

Cho's parents have always struggled to make ends meet.

Sung-tae Cho, the killer's father, came from a poor rural area. He was a "country bumpkin" and considerably older than his wife, the daughter of a refugee, said Seung-hui Cho's great-aunt, Kim Yang-soon. "We practically forced her to get married."

Hyang-im's father had fled south during the Korean War that separated the south from its communist northern neighbor, according to Korean news reports.

Sung-tae and Hyang-im Cho were ambitious and apparently educated because after they settled on the still semi-rural outskirts of Seoul, they bought a used-book store. One could make a decent living selling secondhand books in the 1970s, before South Korea's economy began to boom. But one relative said the bookstore just eked out a profit.

To ease his family's plight, Sung-tae Cho left his wife behind to be a laborer in the Middle East, working on oil fields and construction sites in Saudi Arabia for most of the 1980s.

Back home, his wife gave birth March 22, 1982, to their daughter, Sun- kyung. On Jan. 18, 1984, Seung-hui was born.

For the first few years of Seung-hui Cho's life, the family lived in a dark, damp basement apartment on a busy commercial street in Shinchang, a suburb of Seoul. They lived at the bottom of a three- story, red-brick home, and paid $150 a month, a bargain even then.

Cho attended an elementary school a short walk from his home. About 950 students attend today, about half the number when Cho was there. The cluster of three-story buildings frames a large, U-shaped dirt courtyard.

The school files contain only a single sheet of paper on Cho, showing he left the school in August 1992, at age 8, after partially completing second grade.

"We don't know anything about that student," said the vice principal, who refused to identify himself. "And I'd like to point out that he did not graduate from here."

The young Cho left little impression on those he might have met. Sketchy recollections in the South Korean media all emphasize his shyness, a trait that would follow him throughout his life.

"He was a quiet, well-behaved boy," said Lim Bong-ae, the family's former landlady.

His grandfather and great-aunt, both in their 80s, still live in Seoul. Though they met Seung-hui only twice, and had not seen him for years when his face appeared on front pages and TV screens last week, they said they remembered him as a troubled boy uncomfortable with affection.

Kim Hyong-shik, his grandfather, recalled "a grandson who was so shy he didn't even know how to run into my arms to be hugged."

Cho's great aunt, Kim Yang-soon, remembered a child who was quiet and strangely remote.

"He was docile and well behaved," she said. "But his mother used to say he does not speak, that he only looked at her but did not reply to her. And that symptom got worse when they went to America. It was his mother's greatest heartburning grief that her son did not talk."

But Cho's future seemed bright. Members of the extended family lived in America. The father's younger brother persuaded them to join him in the Washington, D.C., region, home to what is believed to be America's third-largest South Korean population after Los Angeles and New York.

The Chos arrived in America in September 1992. Their early years were difficult. Apparently unable to afford the airfare, Cho's mother did not return to Seoul for her mother's funeral. She called her relatives in South Korea only on holidays and kept the calls short.

But by 1997, they had earned enough to buy a $145,000 town house on Truitt Farm Drive, one of scores of cookie-cutter developments in the area. They were so proud of their new home that they sent photos to loved ones in South Korea.

Silence in high school

People on the block are friendly from a distance, but rarely get to know one another. Neighbors say Cho's mother would always smile. His father didn't say much, though once, at his wife's urging, he cleared the snow from a pregnant woman's car. Most of the neighbors didn't know the Chos had a son.

Cho graduated from Westfield High School in 2003. But there is no mention of him in that yearbook, not so much as a senior picture.

The high school, which opened in 2000, is stocked with high achievers. Newsweek magazine once ranked it among the 50 best public high schools in America. Its football team won the state championship the year Cho graduated. But with 1,600 students then, Cho was the odd boy who never spoke, former classmates recalled. He joined the science club but just sat there. He carried around an instrument that earned him the name "Trombone Boy."

School officials went to some lengths to encourage students to interact. They put round tables in the lunchroom so no one would feel left out. The "Westfield Welcomers" club formed to help wallflowers and outcasts fit in. But none of it seemed to work for the lonely, acne-plagued boy in glasses who was so quiet that some wondered whether he could speak at all.

In an advanced-placement Spanish class, students made recordings to practice for final exams. The teacher brought the tapes in one day and the class begged to hear Cho's.

"We wanted to know what his voice sounded like," said Regan Wilder, a classmate of Cho's from middle school through college.

"It was almost as if he was backed into a corner whenever you tried to talk to him," said Patrick Song, a Virginia Tech classmate who took AP calculus with Cho as a Westfield senior. "You took it as like he just wants to be left alone."

Luice Woo, another senior at Virginia Tech who was in Cho's high school calculus class, said: "I thought he was ... a recent immigrant who didn't know English."

At Virginia Tech, he was the same, though a search warrant revealed that he phoned his family nearly every Sunday night.

Indeed, the profane, rambling diatribe Cho recorded between the shootings, widely broadcast after he ended his rampage with a bullet to his head, may be the most the outside world has ever heard him say.

Sibling differences

While her brother tried to disappear at Westfield High, Sun-kyung Cho was soaring. She'd had offers from Harvard and Princeton and chose the latter because the scholarship was better.

By junior year, Sun, as she came to be called, had developed an interest in global economics. She traveled on an internship to the Thailand-Myanmar border to see factory conditions in a developing country.

The experience was transforming. "They were the most amazing three months of my life," Sun Cho told the Princeton Weekly Bulletin. The experience launched her career with a firm that works with the Iraq Reconstruction Management Office.

Her college social life was as rich as her brother's was barren. As a member of a dining co-op, she took turns shopping and cooking for 25 people. For nearly two years, Alan Oquendo ate meals with her almost every night. He remembers "a very humble person," a deeply spiritual woman who did not smoke or drink and wore little makeup. She worked at the college library and spent much of her spare time at prayer meetings and Friday night Bible studies with the Princeton Evangelical Fellowship.

She refrained from pushing her faith, but would discuss it after dinner with a few close friends. "That would be the only time she would talk about it," Oquendo said. "She was a very tolerant person."

It was Sun Cho, 25, who spoke Friday for her distraught family, issuing a statement that broke four days of silence:

"We are humbled by this darkness.... This is someone that I grew up with and loved. Now I feel like I didn't know this person," she said. "He has made the world weep. We are living a nightmare."

Daily struggles

The pressures to succeed were intense.

Seung-hui Cho's father pressed pants six days a week at a dry cleaner in Manassas, Va., west of Washington. Cho's mother worked at another Korean-run dry-cleaning business in nearby Haymarket.

She pressed men's suit jackets from 7 a.m. to 3 p.m. six days a week, a small woman maneuvering between hisses of steam and lines of hanging laundry.

"I knew life was hard for her," said Susana Yang, owner of the dry cleaner. "Her health was not good, and her husband suffered from a back problem."

Hyang-im Cho finally quit because her arm hurt too much.

"The only time she ever asked for time off from work was to attend her daughter's graduation from Princeton and to take her son to Virginia Tech," recalled her employer.

Yang described Hyang-im Cho as diligent and polite, utterly devoted to her children. "She was so proud of her daughter," she said. But, according to Yang, Hyang-im also said, "I wish it had been my son who was graduating from Princeton instead of my daughter."

Perhaps it was just South Korea's Confucian-steeped culture, where parents often expect boys to be more successful than girls.

Seung-hui Cho's mother never discussed her son with Yang. "Whatever burdens she carried, she kept them to herself."

Yang believes neither parent worked after 2004 because of poor health. When she first heard the identity of the Virginia Tech shooter, she did not immediately connect the name. Then she saw the pictures.

"In the two smiling photos of him in the car, I caught glimpses of Mrs. Cho," she said. "How can this be? I don't have words to describe the pain the family must be going through."

Indeed, rumors spread quickly among South Koreans worldwide that Cho's father had committed suicide and his mother had overdosed on pills.

The rumors were false. But In-suk Baik, president of the Korean- American Assn. of Northern Virginia, paid a visit to Seung-hui Cho's uncle in Edgewater, Md. Baik assured him that Americans wouldn't blame the Korean community for the massacre.

"Because of their upbringing, Korean parents blame themselves for everything that goes wrong with their children," Baik said. "But in America, people say, 'Not me.' "

Family reclusion

Though America's South Korean American community can be insular, the Chos seemed unusually reclusive. They did not regularly attend church, a center of social activity and networking for many immigrants.

Even more important is the cultural emphasis on education and success. Failures are often viewed as dishonorable.

"Our life is governed by chae-myon, what other people think about us," said Tong S. Suhr, a Korean American attorney and an unofficial historian of Los Angeles' Koreatown. "Consulting someone outside the family is admitting that you can't handle it. It is shameful. So we keep everything to ourselves."

Chang, of UC Riverside, offered a darker view of the Cho family dynamic.

"The sister epitomized the immigrant success story, while the brother represented its failure," he said. "Cho was nerdy. Students made fun of him. He was a psycho who needed help. His parents and friends failed in that regard. Society failed too."

The closing paragraph from 1990 is chilling today in the age of Virginia Tech and Elliot Rodger's Santa Barbara killing spree when Asian American male domestic terrorists need a believable cover story to explain their mission of mass killing with no apparent political sponsor.

And then there's the final option ... Just grab yourtrusty and simply fill every goddam racist white male SOB full oflead and tell them to keep their !@#$ hands off of Asian women. It's your move.

"What happened to that nice Chinese girl? Oh, she's out with some white guy..." Wayne Wang's "A Great Wall"

We Asian guys just don't get any respect. I'm tellin ya... OK guys, what is all this fuss about the "mystique of the Asian male"? Are we not men? (No we're not DEVO either...) Looks like the SF Examiner's piece on the "New Demographics of Love" has raised quite a stir. It's not a new issue for blacks. Here's a quote from Michele Wallace's 1978 national bestseller "Black Macho & the Myth of the Superwoman": "What did the black man want with a white woman now? Some women were quite blunt: They wanted black ## because it was the best ## there was. Liberal white men seemed to feel it was their duty to condone these relationships because otherwise they would be racist."

I don't think this is so much a new trend as a topic Asians have previously talked about only quietly among themselves. Now we've reached the "critical mass" where everybody else is noticing and wondering about it too. Asians are now 40% of the freshwomen at MIT, and it's probably close to that at Berkeley as well. San Francisco is one-third Asian so it is inevitable that
some Asian women can be expected to go "astray". One thing that should not be in dispute is that there is definitely something going on, and racist stereotypes have to come from somewhere.

When Madeline Kahn screams in Mel Brooks' "Blazing Saddles" that "It's twoo, it's twoo!" when she beds with the new black sheriff, I don't think that the jokes about the "measure of a man" say as much about actual physiology as perceptions themselves, which have a reality all their own.

Paul Rodriguez remarked that God must have made a deal with each race. "OK, you've got a choice, a big ## or jobs." Well, it's obvious that the Asian guys have the jobs. In "Young Frankenstein", Teri Garr remarked that in building a bigger body, every part would be proportionally larger as well, and it's a fact that Caucasians are somewhat larger on the average than Asians. Still, I don't have any complaints about how American condoms fit, and while I was
definitely the wimp in PE, the jokes were out in the field, not in the locker room.

A lot of white guys really do prefer Asians, though I'm not sure if the blondes should worry about it yet. No other race is so frequently mentioned as a specific preference by white males, and that goes doubly for gay ads as well. Asian Week even used to carry such ads until some politically correct kill-joys complained about it. The LA Times classified have had lots of introduction services featuring Asian women for years. A pair of Asian students at Harvard found that while the Asian male got nada from his personal ads in the Phoenix, the woman got an incredible number of responses, including a lot of sleazy Asiaphiles. And there are a number of Asian women who don't like Asian guys. Another Harvard guy cited going to a dance escorted by a Asian woman who had the nerve to tell him she was really looking for white guys. It was a woman in Wayne Wang's Dim Sum who said that "Asian guys are deadwood. All they care
about is their Betamax, and BMWs." I have no idea of what she was talking about. Honest. I've only got 5 VCRs, 3 8mm players and camcorders, a DV and hard drive camcorder, 5 DVD players and recorders, 6 computers, 8 cassette, MD and CD walkmen, 4 Palm, 2 Pocket Pcs, a garage full of collectible toys and ... well you get the idea.

Even in 1940s, Laviolette's study of Japanese Americans showed that Nisei girls noticed a difference. "When I go to Japanese-language school, the Japanese boys dominate us and are very rude. At public school, the American boys are very courteous and gentlemanly. I suppose it is because the Japanese put a higher priority on boys than girls". Today, my high school
cousin discussed with her friends that if white girls like white guys, and Asian girls like white guys, where did that put the Asian guys? I don't think we're looking at a new trend at all.
Of course, not all Asian women are happy with their white men. There was the postal worker who complained that her Filipino wife was getting too independent, so he shot her, and then flew all over Boston shooting at everyone in sight. If you want more scary reading, check out "The Dead Girl" by Melanie Thernstrom about the Bibi Lee case, about a nice Chinese
girl who was murdered by her boyfriend who claimed "she ran away" when he came back alone from a vacation trip.

A survey of Harvard students showed that far more Asian women approved of interracial dating them Asian men, as other surveys have shown that black women are more approving of such dating than black men. According to the 1985 Statistical Abstract, there were 1.5 intermarriages between a white and "other" with white grooms for each with a white bride. While I haven't
seen a definitive survey yet, I challenge any one to go out on campus or on the street, and count actual couples and tell me that the differential isn't more than just some racist stereotype. We may never see this because the laws of political correctness prohibit any study which may produce "incorrect" results, especially in a field like Asian-American studies. Hiding in the 1980 Census is the fact that Japanese women outnumber men between the ages of 45-55, nearly all presumably being postwar military brides from the 1950s. Now the 1989 INS Yearbook shows that we're getting twice as many women as men 25-29 from Korea and the Philippines. The INS
registered 2,265 marriages to Korean and 6,529 to Filipino aliens that lasted at least 2 years in 1989, nearly matching the 3,026 more Korean and 6,501 Filipino women than men immigrants aged 20-39 in 1989. This means that 56.8% of Korean and 74.6% of the Filipino women immigrants are marrying Asian women are marrying white, black, or even Hispanic men. Many
Army bases now have sizable population of Korean wives, who have brought
their churches and customs with them.

It looks like these two countries are producing just about all the foreign Asian brides, since every other Asian country is sending, and Americans appear to be adopting orphans in roughly equal gender proportions.

Interestingly, while there were 699 more women than men coming from Taiwan,
or 19.4% of women immigrants, 1,375 alien marriages were processed which means that there must be a lot of men from Taiwan marrying white or Asian-American brides. Out of 2.5 million marriages every year though, that's just 0.4 percent, but considering that Koreans and Filipinos are 1 percent of the population, these marriages may constitute as many as one-third of their marriages. The 1980 census says that of 688,748 Asian married men 568,504 were of the same
race. For women, this is 826,082 and 816,830. Divide the difference by the total, and you get 17% of Asian men who married a different race, compared to just 1% for Asian women.
But wait a minute. How can there be 248,326 more Asian women than men married to the same race? It seems that 99% of the white guys filling out the census forms scratched their heads saying "Hmmm, my Suzie isn't black", and called it a same-race marriage, or were just plain sleeping when they came across that box. How's that for the IQ of white males? Anyway, if you
divide 246,326 by 826,082 then 30% of Asian women are outmarried, or 1.8 times that rate for males. That matches up with the "other" figures in the Statistical Abstract, so it makes sense. Boy, it's a good thing I'm good at math. Here's what I came up with for some Asian groups:

Note that the majority of Asians still stick to their own. There are still a few Koreans who won't even let their daughters marry people from "lower class" regions of the country, let alone people of a different race. The Chinese are actually almost even, so the publicity of Connie Chung and
Maxine Kingston Hong may be more indicative of better publicity for Chinese women rather than higher numbers. Otherwise, the fact is still that for Asians as a whole, the women win hands down when it comes to hitching up with members of the opposite race.

Part II: Values and Perceptions of Asian Gender
(Sung to the tune of "Secret Agent Man")
"He's an ...Asian man, just an ...Asian Man
Someday you'll get girls just like the next guy""
(Flower Drum Song)
"I Enjoy Being a Girl"

So what's going on here? Are Asian men really "inferior" to white guys?
Well, I'm afraid that in this time and culture, the answer is a qualified
"yes". Just like IQ tests are all biased by the nature of who's definition
of intelligence you're talking about, "masculinity" is also determined by
values.

As much as we'd like to think we're a national of politically correct
feminists, I'm afraid Americans haven't changed that much from the 1940s.
Who else went to war in airplanes emblazoned with images of half-naked
women and pinups on their lockers? Back then, whistles were taken as a
compliment by women, and servicemen took as much pride in their record in
drunken brawls as in actual combat.

While young Japanese women aim to be "kawaii" cute, the American image is
better exemplified by the Cosmo cover girl who makes a point setting her
fashion phaser to "stun", and "let it all hang out". You know where the
cultural priorities of the Americans and Japanese lie when the annual
shootout for best computer animation in 1989 was between a Japanese film
about technology and humanity, and Pixar's "Knick-Knack", which featured an
sex-starved snowman being led on by a buxom bikini beauty with a grossly
enhanced "feature set". Tex Avery was famous for cartoons of males falling
to pieces or going nuts when faced by bombshell babes.

Arnold and Stallone are typical of the American idea of masculinity. We're
talking huge proportions, hairy chests and sheer physical prowess capable
of massive quantities of senseless violence. IQ is optional, and Alan Alda
is still a wimp.

After 25 years of feminism, American women still expect to have men call
them, pay for dates, drive them, open doors, and make the first move. Am I
right girls or what? We still raise our little girls to be quiet, petite,
reticent, cooperative, and willing to please. Girls who make the first move
are still floozies. In the 90's, Gloria Steinhem is still trying to keep Ms
from sinking. "I Am Woman" is tied with "You Light Up My Life" as the most
annoying song of the 70's. Meanwhile, the big time bucks is still in
Madonna, Victoria's Secret, and Pretty Woman hooker fantasies, and the real
women's issues are still men, fashion, kids and home.

Ever noticed how Asians "balance" academics and dating? The Japanese are
still having half of their marriages arranged, and you'd think Asians still
do it here too by the way they raise their kids. Not one guy in my family
went to the prom. Many Asians don't even date until they get into college.
Half of high schoolers in Japan haven't even kissed while over here, teens
are asking "Mom, we're going out to have sex, OK?". Just don't forget your
homework. I could only get 1 of 20 Asians at MIT surveyed by phone to admit
to being sexually active, compared to plenty of white students.

Roger and Hammerstein's "Flower Drum Song" was all about the American and
Chinese approaches to dating. The mostly-Americanized son had to choose
between the gorgeous showgirl who was trying to get her boyfriend jealous,
and a "arranged" bride from China. Personally, I think he missed a perfect
match in the equally Americanized girl who just didn't have the nerve to
get her message across. This story also shows that cultural conflicts exist
even within Asians of varying acculturation, let alone with Euromericans.
Asian guys don't have chest hair, and Asians immigrants are on the average
smaller than other Americans. They have straight jet-black hair, cute
little almond eyes, relatively high voices, and aren't real big on violence
or sports. This isn't so great for guys, but the girls come out like
champs, making other American women look like iron-pumping feminist
man-eating Amazons by comparison.

Experts agree that Asian women assimilate faster and are better accepted
than the men. Few realize that Asian men make less than whites. Fewer know
that it is because Asian women make more than white women that their
combined incomes are greater. Asian women are far closer to gender parity
than whites in colleges like MIT, Harvard and Stanford that are
traditionally biased toward males. Asian women don't seem to be
underrepresented at all when it comes to beauty queens, TV news anchors,
cheer leaders, or jokes in Bloom County. Connie Chung and Corey Aquino, but
no Asian men were cited by Gallup as the "most admired" persons in America.

The Japanese have all sorts of wonderful names for the classic Confucian
values. Amae is benevolent dependence, which means being dependent on your
husband or parents, and being kind to those who depend on you, like your
wife and children. Gaman is inner strength, which means putting up with
whatever garbage life throws at you, as opposed to the American "I'm as mad
as hell and I'm not going to take it anymore!".

Ie stands for the family, and a whole set of ideas based on hierarchy,
which is utterly opposed to the weird notions of equality between husband
and wife, parents and children, and employer and worker that Americans seem
to take for granted these days. Enyo is the conscious use of silence and
nonverbal communication, which means not speaking out when you don't have
to, and definitely not getting into fights or jumping all over available
women.

The Chinese han means conformity and suppression of individual attributes,
and avoiding saying no. Then there's the good old concept of face, or shame
when you fail at something like getting turned down for dates, while
Americans won't take no for an answer.

I grew up with these values, which might be much of the reason why the
Japanese are trouncing the Americans in the battle for #1. Still, where
these values are supposed to be gender neutral in Asia, all heck breaks out
when you view them with an American's eyes. Now you see a race of men who
are passive wimps, and women who are the perfect definition of what little
girls should be. There's a very big difference in values between what their
parents taught them, and what their friends in school expect of them.
Asians aren't weird, they're just doing their jobs as Asians.

My two brothers who are best assimilated in my family are or will both be
married to round-eyed women, while the two marriages with American-born
women aren't working that great right now. I never had much success with
Euromericans, or American-born Asians either for that matter. Most of them
ended up marrying white guys anyway. My Chinese wife was born in Vietnam,
and I'm American born. Maybe it's just me, but foreign-born girls seem to
be nicer and don't make you jump through hoops to get to them. It seems
that when an American women says maybe, she means no, and even yes can mean
a maybe. When an Asian woman says maybe, she really means yes.

The Asian guy has to be aggressive in making the opening lines and phone
calls, and arrange dynamite dates. It's hard for a guy from a culture that
refrains from outward displays of affection to make just the physical moves
from A to B, let alone all the way to X and Z. It's not exactly a fair
match against guys who are trained from the age of 2 to score with girls.
Americans practically invented dating as we now know it, and it's the
central theme of American popular culture.

Meanwhile, American girls play a game of seeing how many guys they can
seduce, while still staying a virgin until the altar, or whatever passes
for virginity these days. The Asian woman just has to worry about saying
yes or no. Since they haven't been trained to reduce men to a wimpering
puddle of goo before saying yes, some Asians can be relatively easier
pickings for white guys. Some probably like the extra attention. It's no
wonder Asian women are being swept off their feet, while the guys write off
women who go with "Americans".

In the old country, your parents showed you your future spouse, and that
was it. There was no such thing as an imperfect marriage. My mother married
the first guy she seriously dated, and so did her friends, and so did my
wife. Maybe the way its supposed to work for Asians is that you don't date
a guy unless he's really the one.

Americans, on the other hand, try to accumulate "flying hours" by shopping
around until you find Mr. or Ms. Right, and then divorce and keep on
searching when you find your mate is a mere mortal. In America, a guy who
doesn't put in 120% doesn't get anything, while girls don't have to do much
to attract guys who will go after anything that says "yes".

Now consider how this cultural mis-match theory applies to blacks. Blacks
have a reputation for sex and violent macho in their culture that makes
whites look like prudish wimps. Black women are seen as bossy and
assertive. Their hair is short, and the large black woman seems to get all
the publicity even though blacks have "china dolls" too. Maybe it's all
just racist perception, but in this game, it's the thought that counts.

This doesn't mean that all Asian men are doomed to inferiority anymore than
a Reagan landslide means we're a nation of Republicans. It just means that
when all the votes are counted, there's going to be an imbalance unless
things change. Remember that for 3 Asian women with a white guy, there are
2 Asian guys going the other way, and the vast majority stick to their own
kind, especially if they're not aliens. California had laws against Asians
marrying whites until the 50's. I saw one (1) white woman in Seoul hand in
hand with a Korean man. Pam Dawber and Melissa Gilbert have been wooed by
Asian Don Juans on network TV. One white woman I was friends with
ultimately did settle on an Asian boyfriend.

I survived one dinner with a woman who seemed to have a fetish for Asian
guys. Asians cultures don't talk about sex in the open like Americans, but
if Japanese adult comics, cable TV and those little NC-17 ivory carvings
displayed on Grant Ave are any indication, what westerners consider to be
"kinky" is old hat for Asian cultures. Don't ask my wife, please. While
some Jews still treat outmarriage as a death in the family, or the
Holocaust one vow at a time, other Jews consider Asian men to be very good
marriage prospects.

Asians have a few choices. You can pretend it's a a racist figment of the
imagination or tell the activists to cry that "it's not fair". You can take
it lying down. You can decide you're happy with your Asian values,
Americans or no, and not worry about dating quotas. You can get better at
playing the game, and raise your sons to be sex-crazed girl chasers and
your daughters to be cruel teasers who won't do it until they find someone
they truly love. But that's just stooping to their level.

You can sell post-feminist Americans on men who can keep their jobs, treat women well just because they're supposed to, and won't run off with some other girl after 2 years leaving you holding the house and kids. (Of course that's a lie too...) And then there's the final option ... [context, this was when only white male psychopaths were mass shooters with automatic rifles, since then several
Asian men like Virgnia Tech and Santa Barbara spree shooters used problems with women
as justification for mass murder] Just grab your trusty AK-47 and simply fill every goddam racist white male SOB full of lead and tell them to keep their !@#$ hands off of Asian women. It's your
move.

http://faculty.chicagobooth.edu/emir.kamenica/documents/racialPreferences.pdf
Review of Economic Studies (2008) 75, 117–132 0034-6527/08/00060117$02.00
c 2008 The Review of Economic Studies Limited
Racial Preferences in Dating
RAYMOND FISMAN and SHEENA S. IYENGAR
Columbia University Graduate School of Business
EMIR KAMENICA
University of Chicago Graduate School of Business
and
ITAMAR SIMONSON
Graduate School of Business, Stanford University
First version received August 2004; final version accepted May 2007 (Eds.)

Table 5 suggests no systematic differences in ratings based on subject’s own race.
The results are reported in Table 6, with white as the omitted category. For male partners (column
(1)), our main finding is that Asians generally receive lower ratings than men of other races.20
In fact, when we run the regressions separately for each race, we find that even Asian women
find white, black, and Hispanic men to be more attractive than Asian men

Given that Asian men
were the group that other races expressed strongest preference against, and that Asian women expressed
the least preference against other races, the results in Table 6 suggest that attractiveness
may play an important role in the determination of racial preferences, especially those against
Asian men.

We similarly find that female Asian partners are consistently rated as less attractive
(column (2)), though

we also find that black females receive significantly lower ratings relative
to whites. As above, we find that when these regressions are run separately for each race,

even
Asian men find white, black, and Hispanic women to be more attractive than Asian women.

CONCLUSION
Our results indicate that even in a population of relatively progressive individuals, we observe
strong racial preferences. Therefore, preferences are likely to play at least some role in explaining
the low rates of interracial marriages in the U.S. today.

Recall, however, that even though the
race of the partner strongly influences individual decisions, 47% of all matches in our data are
interracial.

Schelling’s (1971) model of dynamic segregation shows that even an extremely mild
preference for neighbours of one’s own race may lead to completely segregated neighbourhoods.

In our dating market, however, we encounter a different relationship between micromotives and
macrobehaviour: our subjects have a strong preference for partners of their own race, yet the
overall level of the resulting segregation is quite small.29

Yes, Virgnia Tech’s Cho Seung-Hui was from Korea, but we needed an Asian American talking head who could make sense of a biography that reads like the all-Korean American success story. As an assimilated 1.5 generation immigrant, Cho was still trapped in a living stereotype. Christian two-parent family moves from poverty in Korea to affluent, high test score Fairfax County. You’d think that the Cho’s had it made over your average at-risk non-Asian minority who works at a crummy job, lives in a crummy neighborhood, and gets failing state assessment test scores.

It was in jest 17 years ago when I wrote in AsianWeek that one day some frustrated Asian male might decide to take it out on everybody in sight with an AK-47 because American culture fairly or not favors white males matched up with Asian females. This young man was in trouble for hitting on women and bragged about an imaginary girlfriend.

He wasn’t poor, but was surrounded by rich kids he hated. The Korean club says he didn’t seek the company of Asians either. He disliked his mother’s Korean church. When his mother dropped him off, she asked his roommate to help out, though Cho would refuse any overtures. He fell between the cracks, perhaps as one of those marginal men in Asian American studies. Virginia Tech might have been like the B+ grade that drove that internet mother crazy compared to Princeton.

My father told me it was important to mix with kids on youth symphony break, but I still felt the Asian urge to put study ahead of making lots of friends. Asian culture often bases networks on family, but it’s American parents put in a lot of effort to organize play dates, birthday parties, ball games and dances. Two parents in the dry cleaning business means long hours out of thehouse, which sounds more like Cat’s in the Cradle than Leave it to Beaver.

The real moral of this story? Something went terribly wrong in this pursuit of the American Dream. Where are the parents who have hidden from the press? Your parents weren’t weird if they were strict or didn’t hug, they were just being Asian. It’s taken Asian America this long before one of these ticking bombs went off. Somebody forgot what is REALLY IMPORTANT.

It’s not the right house or the right college. The best SAT scores mean nothing if a boy feels unloved and cannot bring himself to love others. When the cops knocked on his door, he felt cornered with no choice but to shoot everybody. Whatever grades your kids bring home, be thankful if they don’t end up as a psychotic mass murderer or a terrible playwright. Asian parents, we have much to be proud of, but let us pray for guidance from above that we never mess up like this again.

Wednesday, April 18, 2007

Cho's parents worked at a dry cleaners, according to Jeff Ahn, president of the League of Korean-Americans Virginia Inc.Ahn, who does not know the family personally but has talked to others who know them, described the parents as "very shaken" and "hurt" by what their son did.Ahn described them as "hard-working" people whose long hours helped send their daughter to Princeton University and their son to Virginia Tech.

Wednesday, April 18, 2007Last updated 8:49 a.m. PTLocal Korean community apologetic, and fearful after Virginia Tech shootingThey have mixed feelings over need to apologizeBy JOHN IWASAKIP-I REPORTERHe was one of more than 1.2 million people of Korean descent in the United States, a disturbed gunman on the other side of the country.But Cho Seung-Hui's role in the slaughter at Virginia Tech reverberated Tuesday in the local Korean American community, with some members taking the crime personally and others fearful of a backlash.State Sen. Paull Shin, D-Edmonds, apologized to fellow lawmakers and legislative staff members, first at a private prayer meeting, then in Senate chambers."It hurts me deeply, knowing what happened to Korea and how much the U.S. helped," said Shin, an orphan who was adopted by an American soldier after the Korean War. "This is not the way to pay back the blessings we received."Although legislators told him he had no need to apologize, Shin, fighting his emotions, said he felt compelled to do so because of his acceptance in America and his leadership position in the Korean American community.At the University of Washington, student leader Jihye Kim also shouldered responsibility."Personally, after hearing about the criminal's racial background, I felt as if I am the one who caused the tragedy," said Kim, president of the Korean Student Union. "I couldn't make eye contact with others. I greatly apologize for those who are closely related to the victims."But others said the massacre was not the blame of anyone but the shooter, described as a loner."Just because he's Korean or Korean American doesn't mean I have to go around apologizing for what he did," said Kiwon Suh, president of the Korean Student Association at the UW. "He didn't do anything representative of Korea by his horrible doing."Suh said Korean students on campus, like all students, felt shock and disgust by the gunman's actions."It goes beyond that he is Korean," Suh said. "It's not a matter of race or gender."Ick-Whan Lee, president of a Seattle trading company, noted that the Virginia Tech shooter had reportedly immigrated to the United States when he was 8 years old. It is not unusual for Korean parents to work long hours to establish themselves in their new country at a time that their young children "really need guidance and supervision in living here," he said, though he did not know Cho's circumstances.Korean leaders turned to local Korean media to speak to the community. At KOAM, a cable television program produced in Federal Way, the normal afternoon entertainment shows were scrapped. In their place was a discussion with Chanho Kwan, Korean consul general to Seattle, and Andrew Kim and Chung Yi, the presidents of the Korean associations of greater Seattle and Tacoma, respectively.The men said Koreans should keep a low profile, refraining from going to the mall with lots of children, so as not to draw attention to themselves, said Shelley Ko, assistant director at KOAM.UW law student Chris Kang, who has spoken to shaken Korean friends across the country after the shootings, asked for understanding."The Korean and Korean American community is a victim just as much as other groups involved and ... we should all strive toward supporting each other through these tough times," Kang said.Koreans were already feeling vulnerable because of the residue of the Los Angeles riots that followed the acquittals in the Rodney King police beating trial in 1992, said Cheryl Lee, a past president of the Korean American Voters Alliance.Racial tensions between African Americans and Korean Americans led to the looting of mostly Korean American stores after the verdict. After 9/11, many immigrants believed that government actions and public discourse discriminated against them, Lee said.For those reasons, some Koreans worry about a backlash from the Virginia Tech murders, she said."People will point to Mr. Cho's 'personality,' or writings, or family, or ethnicity, for clues and answers, without realizing that maybe, there is no answer, only a disturbed individual who behaved incredibly irrationally," said John Chung, president of the Korean American Bar Association of Washington."And that term, 'irrational' is the non-answer that truly applies, because there is no reason, no rationale that can really explain this."P-I reporter John Iwasaki can be reached at 206-448-8096 or johniwasaki@seattlepi.com.Soundoff (42 comments)

All day Monday, reeling from the unfolding carnage on the pastoral campus of Virginia Tech, I wondered the same thing everyone else did: Who was this shooter? Why did he do it?When I awoke the next morning, the name of the perpetrator of the nation's worst mass murder was all over the news, and I had another reaction: Oh, no. He's Asian.Actually, there was a collective flinch out there among Asian-Americans.Twenty-three-year-old Seung Cho, a troubled student raised in the well-to-do suburbs ringing Washington, D.C., reportedly left a note railing against "rich kids" and "deceitful charlatans." School officials identified him as Cho Seung-Hui in the order his name would appear in South Korea, where he was born.Now, Cho may be just the name of a guy described as "a loner" who barely spoke in class, but for a number of us, he has a face that looks like our brothers, cousins and friends. That association alone is unsettling.Mai Hoang, a former Oakland resident, remembered vividly - and with the same flinch - the 1991 hostage-taking and siege of the Good Guys store in Sacramento that involved three Vietnamese brothers and another Vietnamese youth. Six people died, including three of the gunmen, and 11 were wounded. With the large Vietnamese population in Virginia and the shootings taking place in the engineering building, she was afraid this bloodbath was at the hands of a Vietnamese-American student."I felt terrible for beingAdvertisementGetAd('tile','box','/breakingnews_article','','www.mercurynews.com','','null','null');dcmaxversion = 9dcminversion = 6DoOn Error Resume Nextplugin = (IsObject(CreateObject("ShockwaveFlash.ShockwaveFlash." & dcmaxversion & "")))If plugin = true Then Exit Dodcmaxversion = dcmaxversion - 1Loop While dcmaxversion >= dcminversionrelieved on behalf of my community he wasn't," she said.How does one explain this jumble of revulsion, shame, sadness - and empathy for his parents - that arises among Asian-Americans? It's hard to articulate, but it does.Elaine Kim, professor of Asian American Studies at the University of California-Berkeley, said she has received all kinds of e-mail from concerned Korean-Americans."Everyone is sensitive to it, worried about it," Kim said. "I said, `Don't take responsibility for it. You have nothing to do with it!'"Among minorities, we're not alone.A black colleague once shared his unvoiced reaction when the Washington, D.C., area snipers John Muhammad and Lee Malvo were arrested four years ago: "Oh, damn it, they're black!"Local Muslims report having similar feelings when violence breaks out, hoping silently that no Muslim is involved.Kim said one of her e-mails Tuesday came from a young Jewish man who first stated, "I remember being disappointed that Dylan Klebold was Jewish," referring to one of the teen shooters of the infamous Columbine High School massacre. "And he asked what I thought about Cho being Korean," Kim said.I can't say I know a single white male who read about Jeffrey Dahmer's serial killing and thought, "Oh, no, another white guy" - FBI criminal personality profiles notwithstanding.As minorities, we all feel that we have to "represent," to use the modern phrase. That we have to show that our people are normal - shocked like everyone else, saddened like everyone else - and that we stand for sanity, for decency and, yes, as obvious as it is, that we have utmost sympathy for the victims' families.We feel the need to represent - and also to distance ourselves. First up was the government of South Korea, which expressed its shock and condolences. The Korean American Coalition in Washington, D.C., extended its sympathies "on behalf of the Korean community" and announced a memorial fund for the bereaved Virginia Tech families.It comes out of genuine concern. And out of fear of a backlash.We're afraid others are only going to see the Asian part of the shooter's identity. Or his immigration status. We're afraid that the violence will somehow be ascribed to his Korean-ness, or that his legal permanent residency - as repeatedly mentioned in news reports - is relevant to his mad actions."They keep saying he's a `Korean national,' but he's been here since he was 8," said Hoang, the news editor who contributed to the blog, "Trip Master Monkey," a posting about the backlash. "He's Americanized."Now and in coming days, this tragedy will spark discussions about campus security, gun control, mental health care. Hopefully, we can all recognize the red flags his professors and others saw.Lucinda Roy, director of the creative writing department, described in a New York Times opinion piece the coming together of races, black and white, on the campus over the tragedy. Playwriting classmate Ian McFarlane posted on AOL News his wish that by releasing Cho's plays, "... this might help people start caring about others no matter how weird they might seem because if this was some kind of cry for attention, then he should have gotten it a long time ago."Perhaps all will see themselves as a community devastated by madness, not color.Contact L.A. Chung at lchung@mercurynews.com or (408) 920-5280.

Tuesday, April 17, 2007Spirit of Self-Defense [John Derbyshire]As NRO's designated chickenhawk, let me be the one to ask: Where was the spirit of self-defense here? Setting aside the ludicrous campus ban on licensed conceals, why didn't anyone rush the guy? It's not like this was Rambo, hosing the place down with automatic weapons. He had two handguns for goodness' sake—one of them reportedly a .22.

At the very least, count the shots and jump him reloading or changing hands. Better yet, just jump him. Handguns aren't very accurate, even at close range. I shoot mine all the time at the range, and I still can't hit squat. I doubt this guy was any better than I am. And even if hit, a .22 needs to find something important to do real damage—your chances aren't bad.

Yes, yes, I know it's easy to say these things: but didn't the heroes of Flight 93 teach us anything? As the cliche goes—and like most cliches. It's true—none of us knows what he'd do in a dire situation like that. I hope, however, that if I thought I was going to die anyway, I'd at least take a run at the guy.04/17 11:17 AM

Tuesday, April 17, 2007

If you could choose to be any immigrant living anywhere or be any immigrant family, you could do much worse than the family of Cho Seung-hui. While most parents work for a wage, Seung-Hui's parents (who evidently are still missing from press reports) owned their own business, with dry cleaning being very typical for Koreans. Of all the American racial groups, Asians, and northeast Asians in particular along with the Chinese and Japanese have the most education, highest rates of 2 parent families, highest household incomes, longest life expectancy, and lowest rates of crime. This young man had 2 Christian parents (also typical of Koreans), lived in Fairfax County, the most affluent in the state, and went to one of the most respected high schools, mostly white with 16 percent Asians. His sister went to Princeton, a top-tier private university, and he attended one of the largest and best respected state universities. As a 1.5 generation immigrant, he would have had ample time to assimilate the language and culture unlike the parents who spoke little english. At least families who live with more modest means and accomplishments who are continually declared to be failures by blue ribbon commission who declare America and its students are going to hell in a handbasket because they lack skills, education, and economic base for the 21st century can be grateful they don't have a child who made headlines like this one.

More facts: His family was christian (as are most Korean Ams) his mother wanted him to embrace church, and this was a point of contention - NPR

They're looking for a possible accomplice who knew the first girl victim

They haven't found his parents yet. Mom asked roommate to help out her son, but he would always refuse.

3 of 4 spree killings noted on Wikipedia were committed by Koreans or Japanese:

Asian kids statistically are pretty well behaved, but in gangs and shootings when they're bad they're really bad. Asians are noted for avoiding mental health treatment as it is shameful to admit having a problem. He's from Fairfax county, which has the highest test scores and most affluent, that may explain his hatred of rich kids, he was surrounded by them.

Korean parents who don't speak much english may be spending overtime on the job, (confirmed, they run a dry cleaning business, a Kor-Am niche) perhaps not keeping close track on the kids, not doing as good a job as American parents lining up friends and a network to hook up with (birthday parties, play dates, little league cub scouts), Asians sometimes put more value on hitting the books than making friends.

Reports are that classmates familiar with his writing were afraid he might turn into a campus shooter. Remarks on the AOL site also questioned whether this college senior was writing like a 7th grader.

WESTFIELD HIGH SCHOOL, Fairfax County: 2,839 students (64.1 percent white, 8.2 percent black, 8.5 percent Hispanic, 16.4 percent Asian, 10.4 percent low-income); average SAT 1069; 95 percent pass state English test, 78 percent pass state math test; Challenge Index rating 2.583; 65 percent of teachers have master's or PhD; 69.8 percent of seniors go to four-year colleges.Brand-new schools in good districts often have an advantage because the principal can select exactly the teachers he wants for every classroom. Westfield parents say Dale Rumberger did just that, and then went off to have the fun of starting another school, leaving the humming machine of Westfield to his top assistant, Mike Campbell.In its fifth year, the campus has the very high AP participation that is standard of Fairfax County high schools, but it also has a recent state football championship and a reputation among parents for making families' lives easier.Debbie Arnsperger wondered if her son, who has multiple disabilities, would really be treated well on the cross-country and track teams of such an athletically competitive campus. At one of his first meets, she stood back and watched carefully. "Even though my son would talk nonstop, and ask the same questions over and over again, and get in other team members' spaces, the reaction was always the same," she reports. "The kids genuinely accepted him, answered his questions and kindly reminded him what he should be doing."When Kathy Sposa's son was injured, his entire team sent cards to the hospital, and the coaches came to his home and sat with him all afternoon as he was recovering from reconstructive surgery. When deadlines got close on his college applications, his counselor collected all his recommendations and personally drove the envelopes to the post office to make certain they were postmarked on time.Westfield has an award-winning school newspaper, a versatile music program that encourages band members to play with the string orchestra, a guitar club with more than 100 members and an assistant principal, Tim Thomas, who, according to parent Carey Williams, "sees potential in kids whom others have already given up on."

Foreign born persons, percent, 200024.5%8.1%Language other than English spoken at home, pct age 5+, 200030.0%11.1%High school graduates, percent of persons age 25+, 200090.7%81.5%Bachelor's degree or higher, pct of persons age 25+, 200054.8%29.5%Homeownership rate, 200070.9%68.1%Median value of owner-occupied housing units, 2000$233,300$125,400

Duking it out on wikipedia over whether it's racist to say Koreans run dry cleaning businesses and that they require long hours.

Dry Cleaning Business takes long hoursGood Management, In short, to operate a dry cleaning business successfully, you need (1) a wide variety of talents, practical knowledge, and skills; (2) willingness to work hard over long hours ...www.ambacom.com/dry_cleaning_business.htm